Chuck Schumer: “Let me say that yesterday all of us were caused great sorrow when we heard the terrible news that Senator Daniel Patrick…”

“Let me say that yesterday all of us were caused great sorrow when we heard the terrible news that Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a giant among us, had passed from our midst. While the sadness is still there, today I rise to pay tribute to Pat Moynihan and to the extraordinary life that he led. It can rarely be said about someone that they changed the world and made it a better place just with their ideas. Senator Moynihan was such an individual. He was a font of ideas. He was not afraid to utter them and he uttered them in such a way that people listened, paid attention, and changed the way they lived for the better. Pat Moynihan was a friend to me, a mentor. I first met him when I attended his course at Harvard while I was a student and he was a professor. Throughout the many years, he extended me so many kindnesses I can't even count them. But beyond the personal--and every one of us has our personal stories about Pat--is what he did for all of us. He was known in the Senate as a unique individual, as a person of ideas in a body that, frankly, has always needed more of them.”